


The Voice in the Dark

by Windcage



Series: Ascending [1]
Category: Le Fantôme de l'Opéra | Phantom of the Opera & Related Fandoms, Phantom of the Opera (2004), Phantom of the Opera - Lloyd Webber
Genre: First Meetings, Gen, No Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-27
Updated: 2021-01-27
Packaged: 2021-03-11 04:34:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,304
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28489149
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Windcage/pseuds/Windcage
Summary: Christine hears the Angel of Music for the first time.
Relationships: Christine Daaé & Erik | Phantom of the Opera
Series: Ascending [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2087778





	The Voice in the Dark

**Author's Note:**

> Big thank you to Jojo1112 for hunting stealthy mistakes!

The Opera’s atrium was empty, the moonlight that filtered through the windows flooding the space in such a way that the marble glowed a pale ghostly white even as a circle of yellow light appeared at the top of the stairs and a figure dressed in black stopped near the stone handrail.

Raising the petrol lamp she carried, Antoinette Giry frowned at the ground floor, searching for something that looked human hiding among the shadows the lamp cast, trying to listen for a mutter or giggle or something other that might say there was someone here and out of bed. Finally, satisfied that she was alone, she turned her back on the atrium and made her way to the labyrinth of corridors leading inside the Opera House. The black skirt of the dress she downed following behind her, Antoinette moved passed the doors that separated the Opera’s public spaces from the rest of the building, stepping right over the frontier where the grandiose display of marble and gold plated chandeliers was replaced by naked walls and wooden floors.

It took Antoinette a pair of minutes of walking to reach her destination: a door among the many that sprinkled the corridors. Stopping, fingers diving through the folds on her bodice, she pulled a key from a small pocket and turned it in the lock. Immediately, the same yellow light that had been illuminating the empty Opera corridors spread over a small room. It lit a carefully made bed to the side of the door and the table right in the center of the room. It forced the shadows up the walls as it reached the large piece of furniture to the other end of the room and moved over the black and white photographs of the girl Antoinette had once been, of a man with a carefully trimmed mustache, of so many others. It went up the mirror and the large rosary resting over it. Then, the light moved on, leaving the photographs behind to focus on an old chair, on a dresser and the empty space to the right of a comb where Antoinette would have put the petrol lamp if a voice hadn’t stopped her on her tracks.

“One of your girls is roaming around.”

Antoinette closed her eyes, she swallowed, fingers pressed firmly around the petrol lamp.

“I have told you not to do that,” she reprimanded, stern, and only for the same voice to again cut through the silence, the clear trace of amusement to the words, the start of a snort, telling as to the fact the person behind them had noticed her jump.

“I’m aware," the voice indeed laughed.

Antoinette's gaze flicked to the ceiling in exasperation before she shook her head and sat, chair groaning as she did.

“Will I have to talk with a wall?” she queried.

The answer took a pair of seconds, enough to speak of hesitation, then there was the sound of a sliding wall panel and an elegantly dressed shadow — one wearing polished boots, black trousers, and a waistcoat — detached itself from the darkness to the side of the large cabinet Antoinette kept her photographs on.

Still sat in front of her dresser, following the movement through the mirror, Antoinette tilted her head, eyebrows raised. She hadn't been expecting him to appear, in fact—

"This a pleasant surprise."

Which it truly was and, therefore, not the reason for the pinching of her eyebrows just now. That pinching was saved for the mask—No, not a mask. A... _a sack—_ Erik had covered not just the right side of his face but his entire head with. _That_ had not been his go-to the last time she had seen him, it hadn't been in years, and as much as at this point his face was a side note on her mind, this was so reminiscent of how she had met him that she couldn’t help but stare. And Erik noticed it. He most definitely did for he slid away from the circle of light and back towards the darkened corner from where he had appeared.

“One of your girls is up,” Erik repeated while crossing his arms, attention on the carpet in front of his feet. "I caught her sneaking around backstage."

Antoinette frowned, immediately turning on her seat.

“With _whom?”_

Erik's attention came flying away from the carpet, the sudden discomfort to his posture for the first time making it very obvious that, for all his height, for how deep and clear and matured his voice sounded, he was still more boy than man.

“It’s not like _that,”_ Erik grumbled under his breath, right hand rubbing the back of his neck over the high collar of his shirt. “She’s just a child.”

It was all it took for Antoinette's heart to squeeze itself.

“Meg?” she immediately queried and even with his face covered with that sack, she could tell Erik had rolled his eyes.

“I would know if it was your daughter,” he remarked and he stopped thinking for a moment, two, before he reached inside his waistcoat and took something out, something he stared at for a moment, something he actually dared brave the light for and that he ended up putting on the dresser Antoinette sat at, right next to her comb, before trying to flee back to the corner, not looking back, not waiting for—

“More ghost stories,” Antoinette sighed, opening the hardcover to take a peek inside the book. "Could you not find something else?"

Halfway down the room already, Erik glanced at her over his shoulder.

“Does Marguerite not like them?" he queried, unsure.

Closing the book, Antoinette had her lips pinched.

"That is hardly the trouble," she admitted in a low voice and just like that the confidence that had left Erik returned to make him stand tall once again.

"If she likes them there is no trouble at all," he retorted, clearly aggravated and pretty much still next to the table in the middle of the room. "As for your _other_ girl, the one sneaking around, she must be new here. I had never seen her before.”

Antoinette turned to her braid, a little head shake being given to Erik's dismissal of her concerns before she focused on the matter at hand.

 _I had never seen her before_ , Erik had said. It made her sigh. Considering she hadn’t heard a whisper of him since the opening night of _I puritani_ some three months ago that meant very little. Half a dozen girls had entered the ballet corps in that period.

“What was she doing?” Antoinette queried, still working on her braid, hair coming lose in three thick golden locks. "I assume she was lost."

“Lost and hugging a Bible,” Erik clarified. "I assumed she was looking for the chapel."

Hair now falling loose over her back, Antoinette closed her eyes. That was as good as an answer.

“Did you take her there?”

Erik's shoulders tensed.

“I didn’t jump out of hiding and take her by the hand if that is what your asking,” he snapped, arms crossed and only for Antoinette to face him through the mirror.

“Did you _lead_ her there?” she repeated.

Behind her Erik seemed to grow even taller in his defiance, the yellowish light of the petrol lamp making his eyes glow through the slips on the sack. Facing him through the mirror, Antoinette almost could see the answer flow out of him. He had helped. Somehow. It was a relief in more ways than she could share.

“Her name is Christine,” Antoinette therefore informed, her hair falling free over her back when she rose out of her seat. “She is Gustav Daeé’s daughter."

Not that she believed Erik remembered Gustav's time with the orchestra, it had been a long ago.

"Christine arrived today."

To the center of the room, Erik had just taken to pull one of the chairs surrounding the round table and sit, attention moving to the notebook he had just taken from his waistcoat. If Antoinette knew him at all—and, watching him scribble something on the pages, she couldn't help but think she knew him rather well—that meant she had just lost his attention, a moment more and all she would get out of him were some polite one-syllable words while he pretended to listen to her.

“Is Christine still there?” Antoinette asked, the stern note to her voice still managing to make Erik look away from the notebook. “In the chapel?”

He shrugged.

“She was going down the stairs when I left,” he said, uninterested and going back to his notebook. “She might still be.”

Antoinette twisted her hair into a bum, putting the black shawl over her shoulders.

“Stay here.”

**~o~o~o~**

_“Our Father, who art in heaven,”_ a small voice was whispering, its words barely audible under the sound of rain and the water going down the drain behind the chapel’s stained glass window. _“Hallowed be thy name—"_

A blast of thunder cut through the rest of the prayer, silencing it even as the child remained firm on her words and her lips kept moving, desperate, _hopeful_ that the feeling she had of being watched meant someone truly was watching over her—which someone was.

Sat on the path behind the wall to her left, just to the side of the stained glass window, Erik leaned his head into his hand, attention still on the mass of curly brown hair he could see passed the colorful saint on the glass. He didn’t know what had gotten into his head to make his way here. Antoinette had told him to stay away and he had meant to. He had _meant_ to. This child, this—whatever was going on, didn’t concern him. But he was _here_. Sat on the same darkened tunnel that had lead him to the Opera’s safety in the first place. Listening to the soft prayer coming from the chapel. Thinking he should leave. Which he should. _Now._ Rather than do so, however, rather than stride down the same darkened path that led the rainwater down to the catacombs, he kept listening.

 _“Our Father, who art in heaven,”_ the child again started, dark eyes never leaving the man on the photograph, the way she moved her hand to wipe the tear that had just gone down her face leading Erik to drop his attention to the water running down the rock under his feet, moving right passed his boots.

What was he doing here? What was he _doing?_ He should get up. He should leave. But, the child's prayer echoing around him, Erik did neither. Instead, he looked between the girl and the photograph she stared at. Instead, he found himself stepping closer to the small panel hidden on the stain glass he was watching the chapel through and knelled, pulling it to the side. Air rushed inside the small chapel, it hit the flame while carrying his voice and with it a whispered name.

_“Christine.”_

The child blinked, her prayer fell silent. Watching the candle's flame dance over her father's photograph, her eyes growing wider and wider, lips parting, Christine looked around the chapel for the first time, her dark brown eyes focusing on the ceiling, on the walls, on the—

“Christine?”

Erik pulled the panel close, Antoinette’s voice sending him striding back down the path to the catacombs while the rustling of Antoinette’s dress, the taping of her shoes, echoed down the stairs leading to the chapel.

"Christine, is that you?" 

_Leav_ _e,_ Erik told himself, right hand already following the rough, uneven wall to his side, fleeing even as Christine's voice rang from the chapel.

“Madame!” she said.

 _Leave now,_ Erik snapped at himself.

“I heard an angel!”

The quiet sound of his footsteps stopped. Frozen amid the rough, damp walls, water running over his boots, Erik looked back, down the dark corridor and to the stained glass window where he could still glimpse two unfocused figures: Antoinette, in her black dress, a shawl around her shoulders, and a much smaller person, Christine, right in front of her.

“An angel?” Antoinette repeated, and fell silent right away, surprise giving way to comprehension, attention jumping to the stained glass window. Even without being able to see him, Antoinette was looking straight at him. The only face Erik could see right now, however, was his own distorted visage as he pulled the sack from his head. The _thing_ looking back at him from the pool of water around his feet, was no angel. If the child, Christine, could see him she would be screaming, she would flee, she would not be here for even a second longer. But she couldn’t see him and so, inside the chapel, Christine looked and searched, attention running up and down the walls and the cross hanging there, flying right over the stained glass window and the place where he was.

“It was an angel, Madame,” Christine assured, turning back to Antoinette. “Father sent him!”

Antoinette looked away from the stained glass window and to the child in front of her, the thin line of her pressed lips clearly stating two sides of her were colliding, trying to decide how to approach this.

“Perhaps,” she finally said and placed a hand on Christine's back, pointing her back to the stairs. “You should be in bed. Classes start early.”

“Yes, Madame,” Christine spoke, but even as she went to the stairs she looked back. Her attention roaming hopefully over the chapel she was leaving, she raised a small hand to it and smiled.

It was no more than instinct that made Erik raise his hand to wave back at her. He was too shocked to think. He didn’t remember any other time, he had made anyone smile.

**Author's Note:**

> Hope you liked it :) 
> 
> Just a quick warning in case anyone is about to hit next - and before anyone does and collides with something they don't ship! - this one-shot leads to an Erik/Meg story :) 
> 
> Anyway, thank you so much for reading! See you around!
> 
> ~Windcage


End file.
